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Flappy Bird was comparable to Nguyen’s previous mobile game releases, such as Shuriken Block and Super Ball Juggling. The artwork were a cute homage to classic sprite art, the gameplay was extremely simple, and the difficulty was turned up high, resulting in games lasting only a few seconds.

The concept sounded almost too simple: tap the screen to fly up, release to dive down, and navigate around gaps in a series of green pipes clearly inspired by those in the Super Mario franchise. The holes were invitingly large, many times the height of the bird. However, because the bird flew so swiftly and plunged up and down, getting across the gap without crashing out was incredibly difficult. Because you only receive one point for each pipe cleared, your high score is likely to be in the single digits, if not zero.
For months, Flappy Bird performed similarly to Nguyen’s other games, which is to say that few people knew about it. In late October, he delivered a minor update that addressed a few problems. A few days later, something changed: someone other than Nguyen wrote the first tweet about the game.